Merchant Prince

• Title — Merchant Prince • Developer — HDI • Publisher — QQP MicroProse (Machiavelli) • Designer — Ed Pike • Programmer — Ken Lightner Rob Lefebvre Andrew Hackett • Artist — Ed Pike Cris-Jon Lindsay Kathy Nielson • Composer — Rob Lefebvre • Released — 1994 • Genre — Turn-based strategy • Modes — Single-player, Multiplayer • Platforms — MS-DOS

The map the player receives from uncle Niccolo resembles those of the period: it is highly accurate close to Venice but grows much less so the further one goes. The mechanic has been praised by reviewers: "Though its gameplay was nowhere near as sophisticated as that of its near contemporary Civilization, Merchant Prince/Machiavelli did a better job of capturing what exploring is really like. Very rarely in the human experience are people pushing into an entirely blank unknown space. There are always rumors, always guesses, always some advice either from locals or past chronicles."

It has subsequently earned praise compared to other turn-based strategy games, including by professors of history. By 2009, Troy Goodfellow was enthusing, "Merchant Prince/Machiavelli is one of the very few strategy games that gave you partial information and very few games since have picked up that torch. Fog of war generally applies to enemy troop positions, of course, but map information in strategy games is generally either perfect or perfectly unknown. Exploring is less about moving hesitantly to what you think is there and more about walking boldly into the darkness because you know that the next civilization can't be too close or that no one ever starts more than a few seconds from a gold mine."